What was the first thing...

[ByzantineDixie]

...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.

For me it was infant communion. Once I learned the practice of infant communion ceased in the Western church in the 12th century and looked at the "rationalizations" as to why--it became obvious to me that my faith tradition (LCMS--Lutheran) was missing this Truth.

As we say down here in the South..."why, that jest ain't ri-ight!"

[Oblio]

When I realized that those I disagreed with may be right concerning theology because I was fallible. I then realized the same held true for them, and for those who disagreed with them ... I was left with no final arbiter of the truth, no way to really know if what I read into the Bible, and hence the Gospel itself, was the Truth, but simply my (or someone elses) perception of it.

[Orthosdoxa]

About what Oblio said was it for me, too.

[Monica, child of God]

When I asked my former pastor whether individuals had authority to interpret Scripture, he said, "No." I was shocked. Though he holds a firm Reformed position, he did believe that we had to conform our understandings with what Christians have believed for 2,000 years. Talk about a paradigm shift! This lead me to question why I should accept my >500 year old tradition over this ancient Holy Tradition that the Orthodox were telling me was infallible. It all crumbled soon after :)

M.

[Dust and Ashes]

I can't really put my finger on any one thing. For me it was like a general sense of dissatisfaction that I didn't notice because it was so subtle in its growth. Then I tasted Orthodoxy...

It was like pizza. You've eaten those little frozen pizzas from the supermarket for years and they are good but they just don't seem that great anymore. Then one day you wander into Papa Vanelli's (http://www.vanellis.com/restaurant/food/lunch-dinner/lunch-dinner_pizza.htm) and get a taste of the best pizza on earth. After that, anything else was just a poor imitation.

[HandmaidenOfGod]

Okay, NOW I've heard it all.

Orthodoxy is like Star Wars
Orthodoxy is like Optimus Prime
Now you're saying Orthodoxy is like PIZZA?! ^_^
Oy vey!

[elizabethevangeline]

Okay, NOW I've heard it all.

Orthodoxy is like Star Wars
Orthodoxy is like Optimus Prime
Now you're saying Orthodoxy is like PIZZA?! ^_^
Oy vey!

No, Orthodoxy is like the best pizza ever!:D

[HandmaidenOfGod]

...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.

I had left the Orthodox Church for a while, and what made me start to re-think things is watching the Pastor of my Baptist Church get ready for service.

There I was, up in the loft, preparing the power point presentation that would accompany his sermon. Rather than spending time in prayer and meditation before the service, the minister was doing sound checks, changing lighting gels, and putting on make-up...

Something inside me said "Is this a television show or a worship service?"

I haven't been back since.

[RobNJ]

When a good ordained Reformed elder started to get the feeling that there MUST be life beyond Calvinism... There was a millenium & a half between the birth of Christ & the Reformation... there must be more out there than just Agustine worth learning about.

I was looking for a richness of both theology & liturgy that I hadn't been exposed to , and after a detour, found all that & MUCH MORE in Orthodoxy!

[EricTheRed]

I had left the Orthodox Church for a while, and what made me start to re-think things is watching the Pastor of my Baptist Church get ready for service.

There I was, up in the loft, preparing the power point presentation that would accompany his sermon. Rather than spending time in prayer and meditation before the service, the minister was doing sound checks, changing lighting gels, and putting on make-up...

Something inside me said "Is this a television show or a worship service?"

I haven't been back since.

lol my baptist church was similar

[elizabethevangeline]

I think I started looking at results....

Personally I kept hitting a spiritual wall...if we are to be transformed to the likeness of Christ, why wasn't I?

Corporately, really ugly church stuff (in a church that's been repeating the same group behavior for 30 yrs) caused me to wonder how we are supposed to be the Body of Christ...maybe it's something supernatural that God does?

Then I read The Orthodox Way and realized that compared to Orthodoxy I was a gnostic, cut off from the full presence of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Then I attended Divine Liturgy and realized I had never really worshipped God before.

[EvangeliGirl]

When I realized that those I disagreed with may be right concerning theology because I was fallible. I then realized the same held true for them, and for those who disagreed with them ... I was left with no final arbiter of the truth, no way to really know if what I read into the Bible, and hence the Gospel itself, was the Truth, but simply my (or someone elses) perception of it.

Yes! Thats so disconcerting! I reached a point where I felt I was at an impasse, though I knew an impasse couldnt really exist! It was there, for the first time, I felt the fear of losing hope for good. How could I have faith when I couldnt have faith in my faith? I began to feel that Id been aimlessly wandering all along, deluding myself that I was on a valid path, and tried to reconcile with the possibility of wandering through the wilderness for the rest of my life on earth... (my journal reveals some of these struggled).

Then there was the despair of never belonging to a group. It seemed no matter where I went, there was some sort of conformity to acquiesce to in order to belong that had nothing to do with Christ, and I just wasnt interested! Now I thank God that I never 'fit in' anywhere, because then I would have been in danger of contentment and not finding, at least by now, what I believe to be the true destination of my searching. ;)

[choirfiend]

When a good ordained Reformed elder started to get the feeling that there MUST be life beyond Calvinism... There was a millenium & a half between the birth of Christ & the Reformation... there must be more out there than just Agustine worth learning about.

I was looking for a richness of both theology & liturgy that I hadn't been exposed to , and after a detour, found all that & MUCH MORE in Orthodoxy!

They could use you at the local presbyterian church...they had a lecture series on "Chrysostom, Sotierology, and the East" during their Sunday evening worship. I went to one out of curiousity with a few catechumen/inquirers, and the results were not pretty...When asked by a child about not lying down for 2 years (as Chrysostom did in his hermit days) he pastor defined ascetism as "denying yourself good things in order to make yourself more holy." Had a nice, civil "discussion" with the pastor afterwards. He was nice, and I certainly hope I didn't sound combative, but I did suggest he get teachings about Orthodoxy from Orthodox sources, and pointed him towards contacting our priest.

[HandmaidenOfGod]

They could use you at the local presbyterian church...they had a lecture series on "Chrysostom, Sotierology, and the East" during their Sunday evening worship. I went to one out of curiousity with a few catechumen/inquirers, and the results were not pretty...When asked by a child about not lying down for 2 years (as Chrysostom did in his hermit days) he pastor defined ascetism as "denying yourself good things in order to make yourself more holy." Had a nice, civil "discussion" with the pastor afterwards. He was nice, and I certainly hope I didn't sound combative, but I did suggest he get teachings about Orthodoxy from Orthodox sources, and pointed him towards contacting our priest.

LOL that reminds me, the local Non-denom over here had a sign outside their church announcing this week's sermon topic: "The Early Church"

I'm half tempted to call them up and congratulate them on their recent decision to convert to Orthodoxy! ^_^

[RobNJ]

LOL that reminds me, the local Non-denom over here had a sign outside their church announcing this week's sermon topic: "The Early Church"

I'm half tempted to call them up and congratulate them on their recent decision to convert to Orthodoxy! ^_^

Wonder how "Early" they mean? ;)

[Khaleas]

Wonder how "Early" they mean? ;)

8:30 am... :P

[choirfiend]

Yes, the non-denom my roomate worked for was advertising "church and communion as the first century church did it." I guess some over-zealous Orthodox college kids came and debated with a person or two at the end of the service (which was, of course, ridiculous). I agreed with my roomate that they were out of line. If you go to visit someone else's service, no matter how erroneous it may be, arguing is bad. The bishop recently said to me(and the rest of my group), "Orthodox do not argue. What do we have to argue about? We have the truth, what is argueable about it?" He made a very good point. When one's discussion is turning into argument, it's time to end it, for arguing is not Orthodox.

[xenia]

I think the facade began to crumble for me when, as a Bible College student, I had to listen to the founding pastor's thru the Bible tape series that he had recorded in the 70's. He predicted a lot of things that never happened. He continually predicted that the Soviet Union ("Gog and Magog") would invade Israel. He was adamant this would happen. What actually happened was that the Soviet Union fell- largely through the prayers of the faithful, I might add. In all of his pronosticating he never expected that to happen. When I heard those tapes five years ago they seemed so silly. Yet that denomination continues to make predictions based on current events.

[OrthoCanuck]

With regards to Islam: in Islam God only loves those who do good, and he doesn't love those who are not good. There were other issues, but that was one of the main ones.

With regards to Catholicism: the Papacy. It just didn't make much sense in a biblical or historical context. I really wrestled with that issue for pretty much the whole time I was Catholic. I also had major issues with Mortal Sin and a few other things, but the Papacy was the first and most significant stumbling block.

As for Lutheranism: they threw out the baby with the bathwater. They had lots of good points against Catholicism (I still have tons of respect for Luther), but too much history was ignored.


Peace.

[gzt]

When I was rather young, I wondered about Jews in the Old Covenant shortly after the Resurrection of Christ who hadn't yet heard of Christ and were still Jewish and horrible time machine accidents where you did not know in which era you had landed [what would you do?]. I had rather reasonable answers, but my own church did not. It wasn't a big deal, but it was a start. I then started wondering where the Bible came from about the same time. I wasn't particularly satisfied with the Protestant answer. Further, there were questions about where the Protestants were during the Middle Ages and, later, why Evangelicals had so little in common with other Protestants.

Also, much later, an offhand remark by somebody asking if I'd seen much of the way other churches worshipped, and I hadn't, this was on the way back from some Easter retreat with a rather horrible little group and I had been quite frustrated and had suddenly come to the realization during one of the dreadful songs that there was more to Christianity and, in particular, Easter, than this [short sentence not doing justice to anything]. The man replied, "Ah," not realizing it was a quite significant question to me. Until he asked, I figured that I would stick it out and take it because it would be good for me. Sometime during the next week I decided to become Orthodox and that was that.

[Theophorus]

...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.

For me it was infant communion. Once I learned the practice of infant communion ceased in the Western church in the 12th century and looked at the "rationalizations" as to why--it became obvious to me that my faith tradition (LCMS--Lutheran) was missing this Truth.

As we say down here in the South..."why, that jest ain't ri-ight!"

It was several things, but that was a big one for me. My wife and I were discussing this just the other day. The first was infant baptism. We both new it was right, but communion being withheld seemed a little off. When I learned of the EO practice, it all started to fall into place.

[FlyFast]

What was the first thing...
...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth?

When our local church split twice in one year! I thought about it and I couldn't think of one "like minded" church that hadn't had a hostile split in recent years. I realized that something was very wrong.

[OnTheWay]

My dad was Mormon and my mother was a "convert" who oddly enough went to a Luthern church every time she goes to church. I cannot say I ever took Mormonism seriously. When we moved back to the US, I think mostly out of guilty feelings, we went to the Mormon church off and on. I've always been into history and it became clear that Joseph Smith was a former con-artist that repackaged a common 19th century fad (the American aboriginals as lost tribes of Israel) into the BoM and used to to his own advantage, greatly so I might add.
Get busted committing adultery and then he tells his wife that God told him to bring back ploygamy. Thus retroactivitely turning all of his past affairs into plural marriages. I guess fortune really does favor the bold. Anyway..........

[Torah613]

Well for me it wasn't one thing. I cannot point to one thing and say "this was it." There were many things. Wehn I was protestant, there was too much that couldn't be answered--so I became a Budhist and got into all the oriental mysticism. Then I came back to Christianity through the Romans, but was dissatisfied with a liturgical tradition that couldn't really claim to be in historical continuity. So I went to the tradlats and was dissatisfied with the clericalism, neo-connery, etc. therein. So I went to the EC's and started going further and further east. There is only so far you can go East in Rome, so I went Orthodox.

There were many issues, but I think what has grabbed me is the Eastern spirituality. Its the fullfillment of what I found in Dauism. Mysticism is so important not only to the interpertation of the scriptures but moreover to the whole of the human condition. The logical system of hte western church completely ignores the soul.

Joe Zollars

[Ioan cel Nou]

Well, for me (and it was something like a decade between my leaving Lutheranism and becoming Orthodox) it was sola scriptura. I started to notice that it didn't make much sense, read up on the canon to see why the Catholics had more books than we did and, as a consequence, discovered (something I'd never been told) that Luther had wanted to expunge James because it contradicted his belief in salvation by faith alone. That really shocked me. All my life I'd been told our faith was based on the Bible alone but this turned out to be a complete lie - Luther had wanted to change the Bible based on his faith because that faith was contradicted by it! I went on a long wander, left Christianity entirely for a while (I couldn't accept either Roman catholicism or the Reformation and knew nothing of Orthodoxy) and eventually returned as a 'non-denominational' (but still basically Protestant!) Christian in search of a home. Nothing satisfied me until I found Orthodoxy whilst doing missionary aid work in Romania.

James

[Ioan cel Nou]

Well for me it wasn't one thing. I cannot point to one thing and say "this was it." There were many things. Wehn I was protestant, there was too much that couldn't be answered--so I became a Budhist and got into all the oriental mysticism.


Interesting. I had a stint (quite a long one) as a Buddhist in my years in the desert (as I think of them). What tradition did you follow? I was Karma Kagyu, a Tibetan school, and I firmly believe that God allowed me to practice as a preparation for my returning to the faith. The practice of venerating images was easier to accept in a non-Christian setting but as they also aren't committing idolatry (they don't believe the images are gods) it helped me get over the worst of my iconoclast tendencies and understand the arguments against that position. It also actually spurred me to come back to Christianity as, during one of my meditations, I experienced something which I truly believed was demonic (and still do). I took that as a sign that my time outside Christianity had come to an end. Does this sound weird or do others think that God sometimes allows people to fall so that they can learn something and then picks them up again later? (Hopefully I don't sound way off base).

James

[Torah613]

I didn't follow any one tradition. It started off as Zen, and later became my own amalgamation of Oriental Mysticism based upon the teachings of the Budha and Lau Tzu.

My time in Budhism helped me a great deal as well. It taught me patience, a yearning towards the internal, a desire for perfection, etc. All of these things in a way led me to Orthodoxy, which one friend (also an ex-budhist with more hindu and Theraveda leanings) described as "Budhism with Jesus" or rather the fullfillment and perfection of what was good in Budha's teachings.

Personally I believe there can be and is a lot of good and truth in other religious traditions. I don't say this to be pluralistic, but so that we can see that others are part way there. It helps to build bridges to teh True Faith.

Joe Zollars

[Michael the Iconographer]

The practice that divorced Catholics if they remarry are forbidden the chalice for the rest of their lives. That hardly speaks to the love and mercy of God.

[Philosophy]

When my former pastor started allowing puppet shows, power point presentations, and "skits" during services I knew something was wrong. I also didn't like the fact that their idea of evangelism was passing out bags of popcorn at the local video rental store that say "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

But seriously, the two main issues for me that caused me to doubt and eventually leave Protestantism were "Scripture alone" and "faith alone."

[ByzantineDixie]

I think the facade began to crumble for me when,

Great way of putting it...it was a gradual crumbling for me.

First infant communion, then an acknowledgement that the Lutheran church today was "different" than the Lutheran church 400 years ago on what I considered key things. I could find a few (very few) Lutheran pastors who were trying to teach and worship in accordance with classical Lutheranism but they hardly represented the Lutheran church as a whole. But the whole thing came crashing down for me with the collapse of sola scriptura. Once sola falls, one absolutely MUST have a reference and that reference is "the Church". So...the search for "the Church" led me to Orthodoxy.

[Oblio]

I think the facade began to crumble for me when, as a Bible College student, I had to listen to the founding pastor's thru the Bible tape series that he had recorded in the 70's. He predicted a lot of things that never happened. He continually predicted that the Soviet Union ("Gog and Magog") would invade Israel. He was adamant this would happen. What actually happened was that the Soviet Union fell- largely through the prayers of the faithful, I might add. In all of his pronosticating he never expected that to happen. When I heard those tapes five years ago they seemed so silly. Yet that denomination continues to make predictions based on current events.

I wonder who that was ;)

[jckstraw72]

I really had no problem with my non-denominationalism. its what i had always known and i was content with it. but up here at PSU theres a guy named Gary that preaches outside the Willard building all day. i listened to him quite often, agreeing with him in his social morality and generally conservative Christianity. but then eventually after a few months i heard his "Protestant Monday" talk (every day has a theme), and he started talking about why he left Protestantism. He said one day he was preaching and saying something negative about the way Catholics view the Theotokos, and how its not in the Bible and what not, so a Catholic and an Orthodox student asked him to show where the Bible states Sola Scriptura. Of course he couldnt do it, and eventually he became Orthodox. and basically, that story got me thinking and i kept listening to him and doing my own research and what not, and at the beginning of this past fall semester i became a catechumen.

if i had never heard Gary, i wonder if i would have ever left Protestantism.

[Birgitta]

Well, for me (and it was something like a decade between my leaving Lutheranism and becoming Orthodox) it was sola scriptura. I started to notice that it didn't make much sense --
I lost my faith in sola scriptura, too. Sola scriptura gives a possibility to interpret the Bible regardless of one's status in the church. That may lead to incorrect interpretations. Experiences from sola scriptura were enough for me. Then I started to became interested in Orthodox Church.

[Jacob4707]

LOL that reminds me, the local Non-denom over here had a sign outside their church announcing this week's sermon topic: "The Early Church"

I'm half tempted to call them up and congratulate them on their recent decision to convert to Orthodoxy! ^_^

Speaking from years of experience, "The Early Church" to most non-denominational churches is the time period encompassed by the Book of Acts and the epistles (assuming they were written by their namesakes and hence completed before the end of the first century A.D.), with likely more emphasis on the earlier period (i.e., when Paul was alive - 33 A.D. - 67 A.D. or so?).

[ByzantineDixie]

if i had never heard Gary, i wonder if i would have ever left Protestantism.

Wow...I have heard about this guy. Nice to know he is being heard.

[Jacob4707]

I think the facade began to crumble for me when, as a Bible College student, I had to listen to the founding pastor's thru the Bible tape series that he had recorded in the 70's. He predicted a lot of things that never happened. He continually predicted that the Soviet Union ("Gog and Magog") would invade Israel. He was adamant this would happen. What actually happened was that the Soviet Union fell- largely through the prayers of the faithful, I might add. In all of his pronosticating he never expected that to happen. When I heard those tapes five years ago they seemed so silly. Yet that denomination continues to make predictions based on current events.

Calvary Chapel?

[jckstraw72]

Wow...I have heard about this guy. Nice to know he is being heard.

oh he definitely is being heard. Our parish has 6 catechumens and 3 or 4 other serious inquirers directly bc of Gary. My Protestant friends think he's worthless bc he's mainly getting people who are already Christian, but oh well, they dont understand. and he has attracted atheists in the past.

[Jacob4707]

I also didn't like the fact that their idea of evangelism was passing out bags of popcorn at the local video rental store that say "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

In my earlier days as a fervent Charismatic/Evangelical, I would have thought that was cool. Now reading this makes me wonder whether to laugh or weep. What was I thinking? What are THEY thinking? Spend some time reading the Church Fathers and modern pop Christianity looks so pallid.

[Marxist]

...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.

For me it was infant communion. Once I learned the practice of infant communion ceased in the Western church in the 12th century and looked at the "rationalizations" as to why--it became obvious to me that my faith tradition (LCMS--Lutheran) was missing this Truth.

As we say down here in the South..."why, that jest ain't ri-ight!"

Returning to a Roman Catholic Novus Ordo liturgy after one Divine Liturgy. I tried to go tradional RC but the in-fighting about who is in schism, not in schism, in pseudo semi complete schism, got to be too much. I became Orthodox shortly thereafter.

I also support infant communion as you state above, as well as conciliarism over papal supremacy.

[Rilian]

There's a woman that graduated from PSU not that long ago who participated in our last spiritual growth class. She told us about the guy who preaches outside and said he has reached a lot of people who never would have heard of Orthodoxy. She converted from Protestantism of some sort.

[Kolya]

...that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.


I was SDA. It was when I realised they used to consult EG White's writings 10 times more than Scripture to justify their faith. There was something Definitly Wrong.

[Mary of Bethany]

For me it wasn't an intellectual questioning at all, at first. It was a *longing* in my soul for true worship. I just knew that what I had always experienced in the Baptist church was greatly lacking. I knew there should be beauty, and there should be transcendence, and the emphasis should be on God, not on me.

That, of course, led me to liturgy and sacraments, and that's where the real journey began.

Mary

[elizabethevangeline]

There's a woman that graduated from PSU not that long ago who participated in our last spiritual growth class. She told us about the guy who preaches outside and said he has reached a lot of people who never would have heard of Orthodoxy. She converted from Protestantism of some sort.

Where is PSU?

[ByzantineDixie]

For me it wasn't an intellectual questioning at all, at first. It was a *longing* in my soul for true worship. I just knew that what I had always experienced in the Baptist church was greatly lacking. I knew there should be beauty, and there should be transcendence, and the emphasis should be on God, not on me.

That, of course, led me to liturgy and sacraments, and that's where the real journey began.

Mary

This is excellent and a great example of how God draws each of us from where we are...some intellectually, some experiencially.

I have to say I attended midnight mass with my husband at the Lutheran church and it was such a stark comparison between any service (vespers, Great Hours, Divine Liturgy) I have yet to experience in the Orthodox church. Several times I looked for an image of Christ to gaze on while I listened to a reading or while a prayer was being offered but there was nothing but an empty cross to view. (Not that an empty cross is wrong in any way at all...just insufficient, incomplete, in the overall scheme of things when compared to the richness of an Orthodox worship. Although considering the trappings of some protestant churches, I guess I should have been grateful for being able to view the cross.)

[Rilian]

Where is PSU?

Penn State, it's in the middle of the state. I've heard Holy Trinity in State College has gotten a steady stream of inquirers from there.

[rainbowbright]

For me it was just after I had found the perfect parish in the episcopal church- it had highmass and beautiful chior in which I sung in that sang classical music, and an old church building that looked like it had come from Oxford. But then I realized something was not there, something was missing and I couldn't quite figure out what it was: The music was becoming boring and no longer up-lifting, the beautiful church had become a beautiful, empty building(this was right before the gay bishop stuff started happening taht only confirmed my suspicion) It was then that I realized what was missing from there- God. I then decided in one single minute I would become Catholic. I was completely convinced it was the one ture church because my husband started doing research. We started praying for the truth. The only drawback was my husband needed to go through an annulment because he was divorced, but because he didn't know any one from his former life anymore, after a year, it was dismissed. We were going to try to go through it again, but then my husband decided to abandon God and I decided I was going to check out the local Orthodox church. My husband came with me and not only did we feel the presence of God, but we saw the angels at work- it was almost a portal to Heaven. We decided we would be Orthodox that day and never left.

[xenia]

I remember thinking about possibly abandoning Christianity altogether, I was that discouraged. I thought to myself- What the heck. I'll take a peek at the local Orthodox church. What have I got to lose? So I entered, full of dispair and disbelief. What happened next was God rescuing me, all in the space of a few minutes. I looked at the icons and all my faith came rushing back to me. I was still a Christian. God was really there. It's hard to express what happened to me that morning.

[HandmaidenOfGod]

For me it was just after I had found the perfect parish in the episcopal church- it had highmass and beautiful chior in which I sung in that sang classical music, and an old church building that looked like it had come from Oxford. But then I realized something was not there, something was missing and I couldn't quite figure out what it was: The music was becoming boring and no longer up-lifting, the beautiful church had become a beautiful, empty building(this was right before the gay bishop stuff started happening taht only confirmed my suspicion) It was then that I realized what was missing from there- God. I then decided in one single minute I would become Catholic. I was completely convinced it was the one ture church because my husband started doing research. We started praying for the truth. The only drawback was my husband needed to go through an annulment because he was divorced, but because he didn't know any one from his former life anymore, after a year, it was dismissed. We were going to try to go through it again, but then my husband decided to abandon God and I decided I was going to check out the local Orthodox church. My husband came with me and not only did we feel the presence of God, but we saw the angels at work- it was almost a portal to Heaven. We decided we would be Orthodox that day and never left.

That's a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. :)

[HandmaidenOfGod]

I remember thinking about possibly abandoning Christianity altogether, I was that discouraged. I thought to myself- What the heck. I'll take a peek at the local Orthodox church. What have I got to lose? So I entered, full of dispair and disbelief. What happened next was God rescuing me, all in the space of a few minutes. I looked at the icons and all my faith came rushing back to me. I was still a Christian. God was really there. It's hard to express what happened to me that morning.

Ain't God grand? :D

[EvangeliGirl]

I remember thinking about possibly abandoning Christianity altogether, I was that discouraged. I thought to myself- What the heck. I'll take a peek at the local Orthodox church. What have I got to lose? So I entered, full of dispair and disbelief. What happened next was God rescuing me, all in the space of a few minutes. I looked at the icons and all my faith came rushing back to me. I was still a Christian. God was really there. It's hard to express what happened to me that morning.

Father Reardon and the rest of the group I had lunch with last Sun. all came to the church in despair. Father has also said there were times in his twenties when he feared going mad. At my first DL last weekend, Id wanted to give way to tears at one point but held it in. When I shared with Father Reardon that Id been avoiding prayer on my own because it seemed all I could do was cry, he said that was perfectly fine and that my tears were precious to the Lord. You dont know how wonderful it was to hear that. Id been treated so often, even by Christians, that tears and other emotions were symptoms of a diagnosis, that I struggled to believe I could have any valid spiritual experience. I mean, through life Ive survived by the Psalms, and I know David penned many of them through anguish and tears, but I was coming to a point where I had been so dehumanized the validity of my experience with the scriptures was being seriously threatened. So now, even this early in my experience with EO, I am already aware of those wounds healing. Its like God has come along to rescue me just I feared I would surely perish.

[Llauralin]

What was the first thing that you came to question about your former faith tradition that made you realize it was not the fulness of the Truth.
I was Evangelical, and had always found certain aspects rather odd, such as grape juice and cracker communion in little plastic cups, my trying to sell kids on the whole Sinner's Prayer/altar call thing, etc, mostly because of my father and things I'd read by Catholics that made so much more sense. But oddly enough, the thing that really got to me was aesthetics, manipulation, and simple bad taste. They got rid of the Advent candles, the Christmas songs, the nice 16th century hyms, and went all "Purpose Driven," with rock bands in church, mandatory worship (I know, I overstate the case) of Rick Warren, and no one wanting to answer any of the questions I found really important, while repeating the same stuff again and again.